Mining is the backbone of public blockchains. Without mining, we wouldn’t have Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and a whole host of other cryptocurrencies. A miner contributes to the very success of the network, and is rewarded to do so. Crypto-economics is the term for the space looking to create incentives for people to participate to help the network to grow and thrive. Mining is the original incentive for users to participate in blockchains, and is a large reason many people got into blockchain security so early. Miners keep track of who is paying who on the network and verify that these transactions are legitimate, all without having to trust any other actor on the network. It is a revolutionary way to run a payment network, and it allows a network to exist globally, 24/7/365, and without censorship.

First of all, big “thank you” to everyone who renewed! It was pretty overwhelming to see the number of people who renewed contracts despite the market. It gives me confidence that everyone understands that mining is generally a multi-year deal. So, thank you again. Without you guys, BitCap could not exist.

For those who are unaware, or have contract renewals coming up in February or April, we have updated our pricing to the following:

We have changed pricing to reflect the cost of electricity to run on a per rig basis, and reduced pricing by almost two thirds. We arrived at these numbers after a candid discussion with a few clients in our Discord channel. Thanks for your feedback, guys!

In addition to new hosting prices, we have spent the last couple months searching the globe for mining farms for sale. We have found hundreds of rigs for sale all over the world. Today, we are announcing that we have prices for brokering these used rigs. Let us take care of all logistics. All of the same hosting rules apply. If you want us to send you rigs, or host them here, the brokered rig prices are as follows:

6x 1060 6 GB Rig $1,800 + $480/year + 12.5% Revenue Share ($40/month)

6x 1070 Rig $2,800 + $600/year + 12.5% Revenue Share ($50/month)

6x 1070ti Rig $3,200 + $600/year + 12.5% Revenue Share ($50/month)

6x 1080 Rig $3,750 + $660/year + 12.5% Revenue Share ($55/month)

6x 1080ti Rig $4,250 + $660/year + 12.5% Revenue Share ($55/month)

6x 470/570 $1,700 + $600/year + 12.5% Revenue Share ($50/month)

We only have a few remaining spots available, so please act quickly if you would like to increase your hardware holdings.

Most of you know, we have been hosting public livestreams discussing BitCap and crypto more generally. Well, I am happy to announce that today, I have uploaded these videos to my Twitch channel. You can find them both here.

Upcoming Forks

There are some upcoming changes to major blockchains in 2019 that will positively affect GPU mining. Some have hard dates planned, while others are still being discussed and/or are in development. We believe it is important that you know what these events are and how they affect you as a miner. It is also important to understand why we as miners care about ASIC’s and how their difficulty affects GPU-mineable coins - even if we do not mine it ourselves. I see the profit-switcher acting as sort of a “difficulty arbitrage.” Many miners are doing this, and what it does is efficiently deploy hashes among GPU-mineable coins into the most profitable areas, therefore generally equalizing difficulty among all GPU-mineable coins. Miners move slower than price in general, so there is opportunity for this kind of arbitrage in the mining market, with GPU’s having the biggest advantage for this type of approach. With that being said, some upcoming ASIC-bricking hard-forks are:

Zcash/ProgPoW: There have been a number of 51% attacks on coins that are ASIC driven due to the ability to rent enough hashing power to mount an attack. In response, Zcash has announced a grant to research the feasibility of adding a 2nd algorithm called “ProgPoW” to its network to keep GPU miners online and profitable, and create a 2nd vector to attack for those looking to attack their network. ProgPoW is designed to run a GPU, and to use all parts of the GPU, with the hope that any ASIC developed would have to mimic a GPU so much as to render it cost ineffective to produce. This would bring in a high market cap coin back to the profit switcher or be a new coin to mine direct.

Vertcoin/Lyra2rev3/Verthash: Vertcoin was also the victim of a 51% attack due to ASIC’s. This blockchain was active in the profit switcher early on, but ASIC’s rendered it unprofitable to mine. Vertcoin has historically always been ahead of the curve when it comes to kicking ASIC’s off, and this time is no different. They have announced they will kick of ASIC’s on February 22nd with its Lyra2rev3 algorithm while they develop a more permanent solution with their new algorithm Verthash.

New Coins to Mine Direct

The new year brings in some promising new tech that for various reasons, will not make into profitBOOST any time soon.

Aeternity:Aeternity is a brand new smart contract platform to compete with Ethereum. We announced the mining of this blockchain during our first webinar. We would need your Aeternity address to mine for you, and mining is only supported on FORCE owners. You can find a guide to get a wallet here. Also Aeternity is supported on the Ledger Nano S after their latest firmware update.

Grin: Grin is a brand new blockchain based on the new MimbleWimble technology that offers privacy and scalability. It also has a dual modified Cuckoo Cycle algorithm; one for ASIC’s and the other for GPU’s. The wallet is still only CLI on Linux/Mac, but we have the capability to mine it if you are able to set it up. There was no ICO, so there is no price discovery or liquidity as of this writing. Mining is the only way to accumulate. The link to download the wallet is here

Beam:Beam is a new Blockchain similar to Grin in that it is also based on MimbleWimble, however the algorithm is a singular equihash variant (Equihash 144,5). We are able to mine this coin directly on all models. There was no ICO, but price discovery occurred just days ago on a couple exchanges. The wallet is here and please reach out to me to set up mining this coin direct.

And that should do it! Thanks again to those who have renewed, and to those whose renewal is coming up in February, expect an email from us in the coming weeks.

WelcomeSTORM (OpenCL) andFORCE 2.1 (CUDA), the latest additions to our family of miners.

Starting today, you can order both models!

At BitCap, we develop products we’d want to have supporting our own portfolios. Before anything else, we’re miners first! Since last year, our team has worked to ensure our flagship product lines,ARMADA andFORCE, were the best on the market.

Mining is the backbone of public blockchains. Without mining, we wouldn’t have Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and a whole host of other cryptocurrencies. A miner contributes to the very success of the network, and is rewarded to do so. Crypto-economics is the term for the space looking to create incentives for people to participate to help the network to grow and thrive. Mining is the original incentive for users to participate in blockchains, and is a large reason many people got into blockchain security so early. Miners keep track of who is paying who on the network and verify that these transactions are legitimate, all without having to trust any other actor on the network. It is a revolutionary way to run a payment network, and it allows a network to exist globally, 24/7/365, and without censorship.